TOD In Parking Lot Land

Can we reshape shopping malls into cities?

Over at Hugeasscity, Dan Bertolet has a fascinating post up. It’s specifically about a big new transit-oriented development at Seattle’s Northgate Mall, but the lessons are universal. It’s about turning 9 acres of asphalt into hundreds of housing units, thousands of square feet of retail, and restoring a buried creek.

Dan’s remarks are relevant, I think, to just about any place with shopping malls, parking lots, and a desire to reshape the built environment away from cars and in favor of people. The execution at Northgate may not have been flawless, but it marks an important step forward.

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Comments

Todd W

April 17, 2009 at 4:55 pm

Thanks for pointing this out, Eric. The development is a bit ugly in parts and it’s hard to like a massive drive-to movie theater, but projects like these will be needed over and over in years to come.

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